Anthony Scaramucci, the new communications director of President Donald Trump’s White House, once went head-to-head with President Barack Obama during a televised event on CNBC.
Donald Trump’s new communications chief had a pop at Barack Obama over Wall Street regulation, and it did not go at all well for him.
Anthony Scaramucci, who took over as Trump’s Director of Communications on Friday, challenged President Obama over ‘whacking’ Wall Street on US TV in 2010.
“I represent the Wall Street community, we have felt like a piñata,” Scaramucci said during the 2010 Q&A session, adding that investors felt like they’d been “whacked with a stick.”
During a Q&A session on business news network CNBC, Scaramucci told President Obama: “I certainly think that Main Street and Wall Street are connected. And if we’re going to heal the society and make the economy better, how are we going to work towards that, healing Wall Street and Main Street?”
“I have been amused over the last couple of years, this sense of somehow me beating up on Wall Street,” Obama replied. “I think most people on Main Street feel they got beat up on.”
The audience cheered. Scaramucci tried to interject, but Obama held him off.
“There’s a big chunk of the country that thinks that I have been too soft on Wall Street,” Obama added to more cheers. “That’s probably the majority, not the minority.”
“The notion that somehow me saying ‘maybe you should be taxed more like your secretary when you’re pulling home $1 billion, or $100 million a year, I don’t think is me being extremist or anti-business.”